


Ghosts That We Knew

by mrspollifax



Category: Fringe
Genre: Alternate Timelines, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 19:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2037294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrspollifax/pseuds/mrspollifax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are infinite ways to get from the past to the present.  What if things went a little differently back when Peter and Olivia first met as children?  AU starting at the time of <i>Subject 13</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate summary: An ode to Fringe and how much I miss it. I originally started writing this for ziparumpazoo during the season 4/5 hiatus, except then it wouldn't be the tiny little ficlet I meant it to be, and here I am over two years later. Thanks to zip for beta reading and cheerleading and general awesomeness!

_i.  
_  
Peter means it when he says it. 

Or at least, he wants to mean it. Means to believe it. When he finally calls her _mom._ And he’s pretty sure that’s close enough to count.

That night, she settles on the side of the mattress and tucks him into bed. “I love you,” she says, running her hand across his forehead and pushing his hair out of his eyes. 

He rubs his cheek against her arm as he remembers doing back when he was small, and then he closes his eyes. 

She stays there for a long time, until he finally drifts off to sleep. And when he sleeps, he dreams of blimps that speed like jets, and of jets that drift like boats on the water, and of his father, standing on a bridge and looking out to the far-distant horizon.

Peter wakes to the still dark of after midnight and lets the dream bleed away, bit by bit and piece by piece. When it’s completely gone, he turns over and closes his eyes once more.

-x-

He sits at the counter for lunch the next day, his mother watching him quietly from the other side. With restless fingers, he picks at the lettuce sticking out from inside his sandwich.

His mother shifts without warning and draws in a swift breath.

“We can go home,” she says, her voice too loud after the silence, her words tumbling one over the next as if she’d let them loose unexpectedly. “We can go home, if you want.”

Home. Peter draws in a breath now, too, but slow and soft. Home means Rieden Lake, he tells himself. The house, not some nightmare world at the bottom of the water. And the lake house means his mother, alone, without Walter.

He teeters there for a moment, on the razor-thin edge of belief, and then, at last, he falls.

Peter looks up at his mother and smiles. “Okay. I’d like that.”

He watches her with keen eyes, sees the swift intake of breath and the joy that suffuses her whole being, making her lighter, softer. She bites her lips together to hold back the smile and glances down to study her fingers, tracing circles on the table.

They’ll pack tonight, she says when she’s recovered herself. They can leave first thing in the morning. 

-x-

In one world, it happens that way. And in that world, that reality, those words are all it takes. An ending and a new beginning, the future set in motion. But in another world, in some different universe, the timeline twists, and it shifts, and it heads down an infinitesimally altered path:

“We can go home," she says, "if you want.”

Peter looks down and studies the sandwich in his hands. “It’s okay. I like Florida. It’s sunny here.”

He doesn’t look up, because then he’ll see her poorly-covered disappointment. She may not be his mother, but he’ll still give her the dignity of not being observed in that moment.

“All right,” she says, slower now. “Well. There’s lots to do here. We could … go to the beach?”

He looks up now, finally, and meets her dark, still-too-anxious eyes. “Sure, mom,” he says, pushing the corners of his mouth up into a smile. “That sounds good.”

The lines around her eyes shift slightly and start to relax.

-x-

The trajectories aren’t far apart at first, in this world and that; effect still follows cause in the same reliable pattern, unperturbed by a little lost boy who’s there instead of here. Undisturbed by a lonely, broken woman and the fictional world that rests too heavily across her shoulders.

It's three days later when Peter sneaks away again. This time, though, he leaves a note behind. He visits Olivia’s field of flowers, and he sits and he looks up at the sun and watches the jets streak too fast across the sky. And he waits, leaning back on the palms of his hands as the day trudges by and thinking, wishing hard.

But she doesn’t come.

-x-

They’re in the grocery store when he sees her again. She's standing in the canned goods aisle with her lips pursed and her forehead wrinkled as she studies the shelves. Peter's feet seem stuck to the ground as he does the math, calculates how long it will be till his mother pushes the cart around from the next lane over, or whoever she’s with comes looking for her.

She’s just one more thing that doesn’t quite add up. 

He slides one foot forward, then the other, one step, then two and three. He doesn’t speak until he’s almost close enough to touch her arm, and all he can manage is, “Hi.”

Her head turns, a swift snap, and then she freezes too, like he did the moment before. He thinks she’s holding her breath.

“Hey,” she says eventually, the word coming on a long exhale, and then, “My mom wants beans,” as though she’s certain he’d like to know.

He does, though he can’t really explain why, anymore than he can explain why he’s drawn to her like gravity.

-x-

He watches his mother talking to Olivia’s there in the store, and he thinks that he likes the way they smile.

-x-

She comes to his house on Saturday just a few days later. Peter’s mother seems happy that he’s found a friend. Olivia’s mother seems relieved.

Walter sits on the couch on the other side of the room as the two of them play checkers on the floor, his hands folded together, just watching.

-x-

They meet again the next weekend, and again a few days after that. Sometimes at the park, sometimes at Peter’s house. Sometimes on the playground at the daycare center Peter’s father inexplicably runs. 

They never meet at Olivia’s house.

-x-

“I’ve been to another universe,” Olivia says two weeks later as they sit together on the swingset, idly swaying back and forth. “I know that sounds crazy, but —”

Peter plants his feet on the ground and cuts her off. “I think I’m _from_ another universe.”

Olivia turns and stares.

-x-

She tells him the story of her sketchbook, of how she’d taken it to his father — to _his father_ — and both book and man had vanished as if they’d never been. And she shows him the replacement she’d begged off Miss Ashley, the pictures she’d drawn from the memories in her mind, and this time he sees them for what they really are.

His father. His world. His _home_.

-x-

The grownups' voices carry up the stairs and into Peter’s room, the continuous muffled exchange between the two women punctuated occasionally by Walter’s sharper commentary. Peter sits on his bed and flips a coin over and over in his fingers. Olivia plucks the toy airplane off his desk and zooms it around in front of her face, buzzing a soft engine sound to match the swoops and dives. 

Two weeks have gone by. Two very long weeks without a single word passing between them about impossible things or the rabbit hole they’ve somehow found themselves down. 

Peter feels like he’s about to burst inside.

He tosses the coin aside onto the coverlet and pushes himself up off the bed. He paces slowly over to stand beside Olivia by the desk. She freezes the plane mid-dive and turns to look at him, her eyes serious.

“Could you take me there?” he asks, his voice low, almost a whisper, as though her mother — or his mother — or _Walter_ — could hear. “If I wanted to go, could you take me with you?”

She looks down and bites her lip. “I don’t know.”

He reaches out and wraps his hand gently around her wrist. “Olivia, it’s my _home._ My mother. My —“

“Son?” Walter calls from the hallway.

Olivia gasps.

Walter walks through the door.

And the world _shifts —_

-x-

The toy airplane hits the ground with a muffled _thump_.

“Oh, no,” Olivia says, pulling her arm free from his grasp and stumbling backwards. “Oh, no, _Peter._ He startled me, I was afraid he’d heard us, I —”

“It’s okay,” he says. He turns, slowly, and looks around. “It’s okay,” he repeats, softer. They’re in his room in the Florida house. _His_ room, not that other Peter’s. The same, but just a perfect amount of different.

“Olivia.” He pivots, swings back to face her. “I — ” 

But she’s gone.


	2. Chapter 2

_ii.  
_  
Peter doesn't quite fit into the child-sized space he'd left behind.

Maybe it's because he knows the things that the people around him haven't got a clue about. Maybe it's because of the way his mother looks at him now. Maybe it's because he can't stop wondering what happened to _her_ when she'd popped back home without Peter in tow.

He grows up smart, well-educated, everything Dr. Walter Bishop's son ought to be. He also grows up a little bit aimless. He tries a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but nothing sticks. Not the doctorate in physics he didn't quite finish, or the one-year stint as a seventh grade English teacher. Not even the three months he spent helping a definitely-not-legal organization hack into some government servers on a subversive information-gathering mission.

He'd picked up a few interesting tidbits of knowledge during that particular sojourn, though.

The one thing he never tries is anything that's remotely connected to his father. Nothing to do with Bishop Dynamics. Not a hint of a government contract. And absolutely no ties to Fringe Division.

Peter's pretty sure that's not how Dr. Walter Bishop envisioned his son turning out.

-x-

One day at a magazine stand, he runs into _her_ , red-haired and smiling but _Olivia_ nonetheless. She’s there in the eyes, in the furrowed brow and the quirk of the head while she studies something she doesn't quite understand. 

He's not sure if he'd have known her after all these years, but he doesn't have to guess. Olivia Dunham's story on _this_ side happens to be one of those bits and pieces Peter's picked up along his meandering way.

He bumps into her again twenty minutes later at a nearby bagel shop. Casually, of course. And he gets her number, because Peter Bishop can _always_ get the ladies’ numbers when he wants. 

-x-

It's fun while it lasts, but it doesn't last long.

They go out on a date or five, and he even shares her bed once or twice. But like her hair, like his family, like this world, that doesn’t quite fit either. She smiles too much, is a tiny bit zany and far too quick to laugh. She lacks that serious quality, that intensity of spirit that drew him to the Olivia-in-the-mirror all those years before. 

She doesn't act as though if she breathed the wrong way, the universe around her might disappear. 

In the end, they part on friendly enough terms. And that’s it, he supposes. It wasn’t _Olivia_ that was so unique, that drew him in with a force he’s never felt anywhere else. It was just the secret they shared.

He's a little disappointed, but mostly, he's relieved.

-x-

Months go by; another year, then two. Peter perfects the performance art of driving his father crazy, and his father drives his mother away.

"Your father doesn't need me anymore," she says to Peter at dinner the first night she stays in his apartment. "The work he does is bigger than any of us."

Peter knows better. He knows that what's been broken between them has been broken since he was a boy, a page torn out of their marriage too soon and in too strange a way. By the time he came home, the story had rewritten its own ending. 

But he lets her go without speaking the truth aloud between them, and he waves her off a week later to travel the world, to find her own new universe. And when she writes, when she calls, she sounds happy. Like she was becoming the woman she was always meant to be.

-x-

Peter's not sure what brought him here today, to this block, this street, this exact corner. To this moment, walking down the sidewalk and lurching to his right to avoid plowing down a figure barreling around the bend a little too fast.

The downturned face and the pulled-back hair finally register three steps farther on, and he draws up short, pivots around and stares hard at her back. 

She’s stopped, too, but she hasn’t turned to face him.

He’d seen Liv — red-haired grown-up not-Olivia — in a TV newsclip just the day before, her swagger unmistakable on the figure striding across the background as a reporter chattered on about yet another New York landmark lost to Amber. So he knows this blonde-headed version isn’t her.

“Olivia,” he says, voice pitched low.

Her shoulders rise and fall with the deep, sharp breath she takes.

“Olivia,” he calls, more urgently, “it’s —”

“I know,” she says, her voice cutting through his. 

Though how she can possibly know is a mystery to him, trapped blind on the other side of the mirror as she was and without a reflection to stalk.

Olivia stands there for a beat longer, completely still; then she spins and crosses the ground between them in a few long, smooth strides. “I have to find Walter.” She grabs his wrist and tugs him after her down the sidewalk.

“You mean _your_ Walter?” he asks, trailing along.

“I mean _Walter._ ” 

-x-

She protests being hauled off to his apartment at first, and it's not only because she'd had some other plan in her head until their paths intersected. "Peter," she says, pulling him off the sidewalk and into a tiny, dingy alleyway, "your father —"

"Does not come to my apartment," he cuts in, finishing for her.

She raises an eyebrow, radiating skepticism. "Really."

"Olivia, I haven't spoken to the Secretary in two years. No, wait." Leaning back against the bare concrete of the building next to them, he considers the statement for a moment. "More like three," he concludes finally. "You see, I'm wasting my life. Squandering my potential and that second chance I got. Also, it's quite possible I'm the reason for everything that's wrong with the world."

Olivia opens her mouth to speak, but he raises a hand and waves her off.

"And you don't need to point out that I actually _am_ the reason for everything that's wrong with the world, by the way. I figured that out on my own."

"I wasn't," she says, shaking her head. "And anyway, it's not you, it's —"

"Walter," he says, pushing away from the wall again. "We always come back to that." He holds out a hand to her, palm up. "Look, do you trust me? I can keep you safe, at least. Give you a place to sleep. I owe you that much."

Peter counts the seconds as Olivia stares down at his outstretched hand, _one-two-three-four-five_. On _six_ , she reaches out and grabs it with her own. 

-x-

The trip to his place wouldn't be long by subway or cab, but it takes them the rest of the afternoon, stuck on foot as they are. He works out the logistics of getting her a Show Me as they talk, whom he can bribe and which server he can hack and what her on-record background ought to be. She's not talking much, so there's plenty of time to plan. It would be easier if he knew what he was planning for, exactly, but broad daylight on the streets of New York City isn't the best place to discuss the details of what the hell she's doing here on the wrong side of the divide.

She waits outside while he picks up dinner at the Middle Eastern joint around the corner from his apartment, then he ushers her though the building door and into the ancient, creaking lift. 

"That smells amazing," she says, her face relaxing a touch, freer now that they're alone again.

"Can't go wrong with kebabs," Peter says with a half-smile. "Also there's baklava."

"God." She lets out a tiny groan. "If I die right here, please feed me before you call the coroner," she says.

He laughs softly as he leads her down the hall.

-x-

They eat in near-silence at his tiny table next to the window, and he can't help noticing the glances she keeps stealing outside, taking stock of the street below, the building across the street, and the sky up above. He waits as long as he can stand, letting her finish her food and making her a second cup of tea once she's done. When she's about halfway through that one, he leans forward and folds his hands in front of him on the table. 

He looks her straight in the eye, unwavering. "Tell me why you're here."

Sighing, she sets the mug down on the table. "We came to find William Bell. Walter and I."

Peter blinks, surprised. "William Bell? Multi-millionaire, eccentric genius, only three people on Earth know what he looks like? That William Bell?"

Olivia nods. "Except here's the thing you don't know. He's supposed to be _our_ eccentric genius. _Our_ William Bell."

"Huh." He sits back in his chair and folds his arms across his chest. "Now that's a plot twist I didn't see coming."

"Yeah." Olivia wraps her hands around her mug and stares out the window.

"I take it that didn't go well."

She shrugs. "The finding him part went just fine. It was afterwards things got a little off track."

This woman had a real gift for understatement.

-x-

It takes some cajoling, but he gets it out of her eventually: name, date, and serial number of everything that's happened to her since she crossed over from her side to his. After that, he packs her off to bed. She's obviously exhausted, asleep with her eyes open in the chair across from him, and now he knows why. Days have passed since she'd narrowly escaped the trap that had snared Walter at William Bell's penthouse, and she's been on the run the whole time.

Living on the lam's not easy in a world where they check your ID at every street corner.

"Why are you doing this?" she asks when he pokes his head around the bedroom door to check on her one last time.

"Why do you trust me?" 

"Well, I don't have a whole lot of options at this point," she says.

Peter thinks maybe he doesn't, either.

He shuts the door behind him as she's crawling into bed, and he heads back down the hall and gets to work. Olivia's Walter won't be in some conventional detainment facility, of that Peter's got no doubt. They wouldn't have a duplicate of the Secretary of Defense — the most powerful man in the country, quite possibly the world — just sitting around for anyone to stumble over. Because if the simple fact of his existence were revealed, the Secretary would have to tell everyone he'd been lying to them all these years.

Secretary Bishop does not admit to mistakes, let alone outright fraud.

A few hours and an illegal login or two later, Peter's pretty sure he's got the answer. He's correlated the times he'd so carefully extracted from Olivia with his father's route and the locations of a handful of off-the-book properties Peter's not supposed to know about. 

Once he's got all the data in one place, it's child's play. Which is fitting, really.

-x-

Olivia tips her head to the side and purses her lips, considering the map he's scribbled and the explanation that goes along with it. "I don't know," she says slowly. "Wouldn't he at least try to hide his tracks?"

Peter shakes his head. "Why would he? He's the most powerful man in the country."

She shrugs, and Peter pauses, captivated by the way the gesture goes from her head all the way down to the tips of her fingers, a series of motions that say _I'd really like to believe you, but you sound like a crazy man._

He probably is, but that's not at issue right now.

"Look," he says, laying his palms flat on the table, "there are millions of people in New York. Millions of tiny little data points flitting around from here to there, and _no one cares_. Taking yourself off the grid's what tends to get people's attention. And if the Secretary disappears? Well, that's headline news right there." 

Olivia pulls a face, but she nods, grudgingly. "All right," she says. "Take me through it again."

So he does, following the trace from Liberty Island to an upscale restaurant in Manhatan and on to the penthouse where Helen Panagos, newly-minted CEO of Lockheed & Grumman, lives.

None of those are unusual stops, as far as they go; certainly a night spent with Dr. Panagos is nothing out of the ordinary for Peter's father. But the 45 minutes the Secretary spent in Brooklyn between work and dinner, well, that's just not normal.

"The only thing near this location," Peter says, tapping his finger on the map, "is a little brownstone I happen to know is owned by one William Heinrich Abbott."

"And William Heinrich Abbott is?" She gives him the prompt even though she already knows the answer.

He leans back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head, and gives her a sardonic grin. "Secretary Walter Bishop."

-x-

They set out for his father's off-books townhouse driving a car Peter borrows from a woman he used to teach with. On the way, they make a pit stop at one of Peter's least upstanding former employers.

"This isn't Brooklyn," Olivia says, her voice pitched low to keep from carrying up the dimly-lit street Peter's leading her down.

He holds up a hand and turns into an even dimmer alleyway, stopping at a metal door covered in dents and scratched-up, fading paint. He picks the lock, jams the security system, and makes his way across the floor and up a metal staircase with Olivia trailing behind.

"I'm not a bad guy," he says, opening a crate on the balcony to reveal a small cache of not-particularly-legal weapons that would prove far more useful than the couple of sidearms he'd had in his entry hall closet. "I just have interesting friends."

"Present company included?" Olivia asks from just over his shoulder. 

"Without a doubt."

-x-

Peter pulls the car into a space around the corner from their target with the sort of practiced swoop only a long-time city dweller can manage, shifting into park as he turns to peer at Olivia in the darkness. "If all we meet is professional security, we'll be fine," he says in one final effort to make her understand. "Or even regular DoD. But if it's Fringe agents, Olivia …"

"Yeah," she says, and Peter can make out the sharp, tight nod of her head even in the dim glow of streetlights filtering through the car window.

He returns her nod. "As long as we're clear that this is, in fact, suicidally stupid, then I'm all in." 

He hears the soft huff of her laughter, and even though he can't see the smile that goes with it, he can imagine it. A smile far too knowing for a little girl in a field of tulips, all the horror and the hope in the world hiding within.

-x-

They case the street, walking down it like friends out for an evening stroll. Peter's hoping for a lucky break, for a nearby house on one side or the other that's obviously unoccupied, giving them a way to get to the alley in back unnoticed. Anything's better than knocking on the front door. But window after window is lit, some of them open, and a few of the stoops even boast small groups of men and women chatting as they drink their beer or watch their children playing on the sidewalk. 

Peter's about to suggest rounding the corner and checking the houses on the next street over when a fellow leaning against a light pole and reading a newspaper straightens up and heads straight for them. He's standing in front of Olivia before Peter has time to do more than tense up.

"Agent Dunham?" he says, rubbing at his furrowed brow before he runs his hand back through his hair. "I didn't know you were on this detail."

Olivia rolls her eyes and shrugs, not missing a beat. "Neither did I till I got the call."

"Night off?"

"Not anymore," she says, and the two of them both grin and shake their heads in the sort of well-worn camaraderie that only long-time veterans of the same war can share. Long-time fellow veterans or their alternate universe doppelgangers, at least. Peter is impressed.

He's even more impressed when he watches her work inside. A swift chop to the side of the neck takes out the agent who'd brought them in; a shout for help from Olivia brings the rest of the detail down from upstairs. They cluster around their comrade, checking his pulse and wondering aloud about whether he was sick, but before they can call for medical assistance, Olivia's got them down too. With swift, sure movements, she checks to make sure they're really out, then she makes her way through the remaining three rooms on the first story, checking to be sure they're alone.

Peter's still blinking a bit in surprise when she's heading up the stairs.

-x-

The door of the first bedroom is wide open, and Walter's right there, bound to a chair with his eyes closed and his head hanging down, chin against his chest. Olivia leaves Peter at the doorway with a nod towards the stairwell and clears the rest of the floor. He watches the stairs and front door until she returns and brushes past him, crossing the floor to kneel in front of Walter.

Peter's not sure what he's supposed to be feeling right now, looking at the man in the chair who both is and isn't his father. 

"Walter," Olivia says, her voice low and gentle. She tries again when he doesn’t respond, putting her hand to his cheek and patting him a few times. "C'mon, Walter. Time to go home."

He grunts a little as he stirs at last, his head lifting an inch or two from his chest. His eyes open a crack, then blink a few times in the stuttering rhythm of someone fighting hard against an overwhelming urge to stay asleep. 

"That's it," Olivia says, laying her hand on his arm as he starts to pull against the restraints. "You're fine."

He shakes his head a little and finally manages to open his eyes all the way. "Olivia," he says, a slow smile stretching across his face, "I'm so glad you came." 

His voice sounds more like she's visiting him for afternoon tea rather than breaking into an undisclosed location to rescue him, and the corner of Olivia's mouth twitches in response. "Wouldn't miss it, Walter," she says. She pulls a pocketknife out of her back pocket and flips it open, setting to work on his restraints. "How're you doing?"

"Hmm." Walter furrows his brow and purses his lips. "They gave me," he begins, tipping his head to the side, "some _very_ interesting drugs. I don't think —" He breaks off as he glances past Olivia's shoulder and spies Peter for the first time.

"Walter?" she prods.

Walter gives his head a little shake. "I wasn't hallucinating before, but I think perhaps I've just begun." His voice is stronger and steadier now, and for the first time Peter can hear an echo of the man who raised him and of the Walter he'd met on the other side so many years ago.

Olivia tosses the last of the restraints to the side and straightens, reaching down to grasp Walter's forearms and help him up out of the chair. "Nope. No time for that now, though. We have to move."

-x-

They exit the building through the back door, dragging a still-groggy Walter along with them and leaving the handful disabled Fringe agents behind. 

Peter hates to think about the amount of trouble that's going to cause Liv in the morning.

They head down the alley and up the rear steps of the house closest to their parking place. The back door's unlocked, and Peter pushes it open, calling out, "Fringe Division," in the most official voice he can muster, an attitude he figures he's probably channeling from all those years living with his father. Olivia keeps her arm around Walter, urging him through the kitchen and the living room and down the front steps while the people in the house stare in confusion at what they must assume is the Secretary. 

Actually, this little episode is likely to cause a whole lot of people no end of trouble tomorrow.

-x-

 

"Where are we going?" Walter asks, his voice high and tight, almost childlike.

"The theater. The old opera house."

"Can't we go back to —"

"They sealed it," Olivia says, cutting him off. "In Amber. There's no way."

Walter makes a sound of distress. Peter doesn't need to glance over his shoulder into the backseat to know the older man is clinging to the door handle so hard his knuckles are turning white. He'd grabbed on the minute Olivia had put him into the car and hasn't let go since. 

"It's okay, Walter," Olivia says, low and calm. "This is from your backup list. And it's the closest spot to where they were holding you."

"Olive —"

"I'll manage fine, Walter."

Walter sighs. "I know. You always do."

Peter can't quite make out how much of Walter's upset and confusion is from whatever cocktail of pharmaceuticals he'd been given back at the secretary's townhouse and how much is something else altogether. Given Olivia's patient words and her obvious lack of alarm at Walter's state, Peter's beginning to suspect that the balance tips more towards the latter than he'd initially thought, but he doesn't have time to consider that right now. He corners the car, pulls into an alley, and cuts the ignition. "Here we are," he says, turning to face Olivia. "Now what?"

-x-

They locate the side entrance to the theater in the alley without any trouble; Peter stands watch up at the street corner while Olivia works on the door with his set of lockpicks.

"Got it," she says at last, her voice pitched low but still carrying all the way up the alley to reach Peter. He's about to turn away and join them when the first in a line of black SUVs barrels around the corner several blocks away. He draws in a swift breath and trots back to Olivia and Walter.

"Come on," he says. "We'd better move. That's trouble on the way."

-x-

They move down the corridor past storage areas and dressing rooms, their flashlights illuminating props and chairs and costume racks along the way. The deep silence of the building is almost comedic given what they all know must be happening on the other side of the old building's sturdy brick walls. Peter's imagination fills in the missing sounds: tires screeching, car doors banging, agents shouting as they coordinate their assault. 

There doesn't seem to be any way out for him now. He'd walked into this with an old debt and a childlike faith that somehow he'd come out the other side the same way he always did, scot-free and with no one anyone the wiser. He'd be able to repay his debt, send Olivia home, and walk away, never to think about her or Walter or their world again. Curtain down. Time for Peter to move on to the next act.

But it turns out that after nearly a lifetime of moving from one act to another without giving a damn what he was leaving behind him, Peter's stumbled unexpectedly into the final scene, and no one's even bothered to hand him a script.

-x-

"It's here," Olivia says as they cross the open area backstage. "Over here." She takes a step out from the wings and onto the stage. Moonlight filters dimly through the domed window in the ceiling, filling the room with shadows that could be hiding the whole of Fringe Division for all Peter can tell. But when Olivia plays the beam of her flashlight around the house, the bright spot of light illuminates only empty seats and closed doors as it slides up to the balconies and down along the aisles.

"Looks like we're still on our own," Olivia says, her voice low, "but we'd better hurry."

Peter doesn’t have to imagine the sound of the Fringe team that's coming for them now; the thumps and shouts from the lobby are muffled but growing louder. There's no time to think, no time even to hesitate, but even so, Peter takes the last few steps onto the stage slowly, lagging behind the others. Olivia turns, holding out her hand, beckoning with her fingers impatiently.

"Olivia." He looks away, up the aisle towards the doors. "I can't —"

"Yes, you can."

"No, I can't. Not again."

"Peter…." She drops her hand, takes a step back towards him, then another. Slowly, like she's approaching a wary child or a wild dog. When she speaks, her voice sounds like that, too. "Peter, you have no idea what they're going to do to you when they come through those doors and find you here. You have _no idea_ what they're capable of. If you'd seen the things I've seen, lived the last few years of my life … you can't stay here."

He knows she's right. There's always been so much more to it than Fringe Division protecting the homeland. It's why he's stayed away, out on the far-distant edge of things. But still. "This is my _home_." 

She nods, as though conceding. "All right. I understand." But she takes another step closer, then two more, closing the distance between them. She reaches out again, her hand hovering close to his wrist without actually touching. "But do you really _belong_ here any more?"

Someone's hammering at the exterior doors now, and Peter hears footsteps coming from backstage. Beyond Olivia, Peter sees Walter look up and around, his head swiveling fast, his breathing rapid. "Olivia," Walter says, loud and clipped. "We need to leave. Now."

But Olivia's gaze stays solid on Peter, unwavering. 

The park. The house. The playground. A fleeting few hours of his life and an impossible field of white tulips. He shouldn't trust her.

He's never trusted anyone else.

"Well?" she asks softly.

Peter nods. "Okay. Let's go."

The first door bangs open, followed by the rest, and Fringe agents flood into the room, down the stairs and up the aisle and out of the offstage wings. Peter's gaze is caught by the rectangle of light in one of the doors, by the silhouette of a man standing straight and broad-shouldered as he watches the operation unfolding before him.

Peter can't move. His feet are stuck fast to the ground. 

But Olivia grabs Peter's wrist, and she grabs Walter's hand, and they _shift —_


	3. Chapter 3

_iii.  
_  
Peter draws in a breath and starts to cough on musty air and dust. "Where are we?" he chokes out through the spasms, peering into the grey-black space surrounding them.

Olivia drops his arm. Over the sound of his heartbeat, still pounding wildly in his ears, Peter hears rustling, then a click, and the beam of her flashlight once again plays about the room. The stage. The seats. Scaffolding and plastic sheeting. And overhead, the notable absence of the glass dome.

"We're home," she says. "Come on."

-x-

They follow the aisle by the light of Olivia's flashlight and cross the lobby by the dim orange glow of streetlights filtering in through windows and polyethylene. When they reach the glass doors of the main entrance, Olivia stops and holds up a hand. 

"You two wait here," she says before she pushes the door open, walks out onto the sidewalk, and vanishes down the street. 

She crosses in front of them a few minutes later heading the opposite direction, and again twice more. Peter holds the door open for her when she finally gives up on her search. 

"No one watching the back door?" he asks once she's back inside.

She shrugs. "Apparently not." She sounds surprised, but not entirely displeased. "I could call for pickup," she says, "but I think we're better off waiting till morning."

Peter's not going to argue the point. He's not in any particular hurry for her to make that call. He's glad to know she's not either. 

-x-

They pass what's left of the night in the lobby; no one sleeps, but no one talks much, either. Peter sits on the grand staircase and taps a quiet rhythm on step and stair rail until the orange light fades with the breaking of day. 

It doesn't quite keep the sound of his own thoughts at bay.

When he finally follows Olivia out of the theater's door and into the pale morning sun, the first thing he sees is a plane droning across the sky, the long cloud-like plume stretching out behind it tinted pink with the dawn. He wonders what ever became of that old toy plane from over there — over _here_ — that he'd inadvertently brought home with him. His father had pulled it out of Peter's hands, and Peter had never laid eyes on it again.

He'd never cared enough to ask before.

They stand on the sidewalk, watching the early-morning traffic flow by in fits and starts; Olivia turns her head back and forth and lets out a _hmm_ that Peter's got no idea how to interpret.

Walter turns around, looking back at the theater. He tugs restlessly at the cuff of one sleeve, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "Olivia —"

"It's okay, Walter. It's going to be fine."

Peter glances up at the sky once more. The plane's flown on and disappeared, but the trail lingers on. 

-x-

They grab a cab to the nearest station and hop a train from New York up to Boston. Nobody asks for a Show Me, and no one looks at Peter like he's breaking some kind of metaphysical taboo. Walter garners more than his fair share of second glances, muttering to himself and stopping to stare here and there along the way, but none of them are the looks Peter's used to seeing directed at his father. Admiration. Fear. Awe.

On the train, Peter snags a window seat without asking, and Olivia sits down next to him, trapping him between her and the rest of the world. That's probably highly symbolic, but he'd rather not think about that yet. He turns away, resting his cheek on his balled-up fist and staring out the window as the train pulls out. 

He watches the city slide by, T-squared streets and soot-stained buildings stretching back and far away, until his fatigued body and mind lose the battle with the rhythm of the rails and he falls asleep.

-x-

When he wakes, the densely-packed big city blocks have given way to the trees and lawns and sailboat-dotted bays of what he assumes is Connecticut, even over here. The seat next to him is vacant now; Olivia's moved across the aisle and settled in beside Walter. Walter, for his part, is sitting very, very still, except for his hands. His hands are twisting back and forth, folding and unfolding a shiny tin-foil gum wrapper over and over and over again. 

It's a detail that's oddly comforting, the sort of nervous habit Secretary Bishop would never have allowed himself to share. 

Olivia's speaking softly, her hand resting on Walter's arm, and somehow Peter's sure they're talking about _him_. About what happens to him now.

What happens to him now probably involves a fair number of locks and misplaced keys. Peter was kidding himself to ever think otherwise. He wonders why, exactly, he made all of the choices he did, when at so many points he could have called it all off and avoided being stranded on the wrong side of a big honking quantum divide. _Again._

If there's a God somewhere in the multiverse, Peter's pretty sure he's laughing right about now.

"But Olivia," Walter says, his voice climbing from the murmurs of a moment before, "You can't just let them —"

"Walter." Olivia's voice cuts over his sharply. "Not here. When we get back …" Her voice drops again and whatever else she says vanishes into the _thunk-thunk-thunk_ of the train running on the track below. 

Walter crushes the gum wrapper in his hand. Olivia sighs and sits back in her seat. She closes her eyes for a long moment, then turns to glance at Peter. She freezes when she sees him awake, her brows furrowing. Then her expression clears and she gives him a small, apologetic smile. 

Good or bad, somehow Peter's life always comes back to her.

-x-

Peter hasn’t seen Harvard in years; his memories are faded and jagged around the edges. Walking down the streets of Cambridge and through the greens squares and red brick buildings of the campus should be like a history book coming to life, but it turns out it's more surreal than that. 

A history book wouldn't capture the rush and push of the wind as it blows leaves and litter here and there and tugs at the edges of fliers taped to light poles. Opening its covers wouldn't release the aroma of coffee and croissants drifting from the bakery at the corner or the city-sewer stench lingering near the storm drains. The pictures on the pages wouldn't be so unashamedly decorated with bright young people going about their lives without any idea of the darkness and danger that lurk only a quantum heartbeat away.

Harvard, Cambridge, all of Boston, perfectly preserved and undisturbed by the phantoms of Peter's past — that's hard to take in. But when he descends the stairs to the basement of the Kresge building and stands in the doorway of the lab that to Peter symbolizes his father's past life, whole and unchanged, Peter can almost hear the click as everything slides back into place.

He's still stuck in place listening to the echoes of a sound that never happened when Olivia pushes past him through the door. Her mouth opens on what Peter assumes is an explanation, but it's too late. She's already seen him. 

Elizabeth. His mother.

For several long seconds, she stares right at Peter, and Peter stares right back. Her brow furrows, and she draws in a breath as if to speak before she turns away from him to face Olivia instead. 

"I was so worried," Elizabeth says, putting her hand on Olivia's cheek. "What happened?"

Olivia purses her lips and gives a tiny shrug. "Let's just say that talent I've always had for stirring up trouble seems to be just as strong no matter what reality I'm in." Her words and her tone couldn't be any clearer if she'd held up a sign that said _let's not go here yet_ , but her hand reaches up to clasp and squeeze Elizabeth's reassuringly. "But we're back in one piece."

"With an extra to spare, it seems," Elizabeth says softly.

Olivia nods. "My fault this time."

"I see."

In the hallway behind Peter, Walter hums a tune that seems familiar but that Peter can't quite catch. Walter's feet tap and shuffle a bit to the beat as he paces closer, coming to stand almost at Peter's back as the tune draws to an end. 

"She missed you."

Peter's honestly not sure which of the women Walter means. 

Walter nudges Peter's shoulder, but Peter can't seem to force himself to cross the threshold into this strange hybrid of past and future. After another nudge or two, Walter grunts, turns himself sideways, and slides by Peter and into the lab. He walks across the room and immediately starts to fiddle with one piece of equipment after another.

Elizabeth's eyes follow him as he goes. " _He_ called," she tells Olivia, "about half an hour ago. He sounded a little tense." She squeezes Olivia's arm, then she straightens her shoulders and walks to Walter's side.

Olivia closes her eyes and breathes out long and slow before she rejoins Peter at the door. "I have to …" She plucks her phone from her pocket and holds it in front of her. "My boss isn't going to be particularly happy that I brought you back with us."

"Yeah." Peter nods and finally steps all the way into the room. "Didn't figure anyone much would be."

-x-

She's on the phone for a long time. At first, she paces back and forth along the far wall of the lab, well out of Peter's earshot; eventually, she enters the private office and pulls the door shut behind her.

When Peter looks away, he finds Elizabeth staring at the closed door. Walter, though, is staring right at Peter, a Petri dish clasped tight in his frozen hand. Peter meets Walter's gaze, one eyebrow raised in challenge, and Walter's eyes fall. The Petri dish drops to the counter with a clatter, and Walter starts to mutter under his breath at a rapid-fire pace. Elizabeth turns back to him and lays a hand on his arm. Her eyes flick to Peter before settling again on Walter, and she nods, her hand squeezing gently.

These people are nothing like the ones that have lived in Peter's memory all these years — the memories of a scared eight-year-old boy. He's not sure who these people are at all.

-x- 

Olivia's phone has vanished again when she leaves the office, shoved back into her pocket with Peter's fate no doubt decided, at least for the short term. She crosses the room to stand still and quiet at Peter's side as he continues to consider the puzzle of the two people on the other side of the lab.

"She left him," he says at last. "On the other side. Said he didn't …." Peter shakes his head. He's not sure if he's talking to fill the emptiness or to answer the question he's sure her silence is asking. Maybe it doesn't matter. "Said he didn't need us anymore."

"They're not what you think," Olivia says in oblique reply.

They're not, if for no other reason than this man is nothing like Peter's real father. "Right now I don't think much of anything."

"That's fair," she says. "I don't know what you thought of them back then. After you went home." She turns to face him, and the look she fixes on him is so much like all those years ago that he can almost feel the room shrinking, contracting around them. "Peter, my mother _died_. And all I had left …." 

She trails off, tipping her head and pursing her lips as though she's searching for the right words, but her shoulders tighten and her hands clasp into fists at her sides. "I don't know what would have happened to me without them," she continues at last. "They didn't have to take me in. They could have hated me for taking you away, for taking you home. But they _didn’t._ "

Peter takes a step back, away from the tension in her body and the fierceness in her eye. He doesn't know what he'd expected had happened to Olivia, but it wasn't this. It wasn't even more loss, wasn't taking his place with his family as some kind of surrogate. He has to remind himself that they'd never been _his_ family, and that no Olivia he'd ever met would be anybody's stand-in.

Across the lab, Walter bends down to the counter, holding a new Petri dish in one hand and a swab in the other. He's speaking to Elizabeth as he draws the tip of the swab across the bottom of the dish, his body relaxed and his demeanor calm, as though the interlude of moments before had never happened. Elizabeth leans in and kisses the top of his head, and he glances up and smiles at her, childlike. She pats his shoulder and settles onto a stool nearby. When she looks up at Peter and Olivia, it's Olivia her attention settles on, Olivia who makes her brow crease and the fingers of one hand worry at the other.

Watching them now, it's like Olivia's shown him another universe all over again.

"My boss is sending in a team," Olivia says, and Peter nods. 

Elizabeth shifts on the stool, running a hand through her hair.

"What happened to him?" Peter asks.

Olivia sighs. "He did that to himself."

"On purpose?" Olivia nods, and Peter decides to forgo the obvious question of how. Instead, he dives straight for the one that's probably impossible to answer. "Why?"

Olivia smiles, a halfhearted, lopsided expression that doesn't quite touch the sadness in her eyes. "Because he wanted to be a better man," she says after a few breaths of silence pass.

" _Einai kalytero anthropo apo ton patera toy._ " Peter's words tumble out without thought, a lesson learned by rote, but Olivia's head swivels back to face him and she stares wide-eyed, like she's seen a ghost. "What?" he asks, curious.

"She taught me that," Olivia says, nodding her head at Peter's not-really mother.

Maybe it's not so impossible to answer after all.

Footsteps sound in the hallway behind them, faint at first but growing louder, echoing off the hard surface of walls and floor. Dread gathers in Peter's belly, tries to claw its way up and out, but he shoves it back down his throat. Straightening his shoulders, he turns to face the open door. 

"It's going to be all right, Peter," Olivia says, standing still and silent at his side. 

Peter doesn't answer. He offers no protest as he's escorted up the stairs and out of the building, one unidentified and somber-suited agent on either side. 

Before he climbs into the back of the black Suburban — trouble _here_ as much as _there_ — he meets Olivia's eyes. She gives him one small, slow nod, then steps back and away.

The door swings shut with a thud.


	4. Chapter 4

_iv._  
  
The agents lead Peter into the building far too casually, as though he's not in custody at all; they follow him into the elevator like today's nothing more than an average day at the office. But at the end of the elevator ride, they walk him down a corridor and deposit him at a table in an interrogation room, complete with mirrored wall, utilitarian table, and a camera watching his every move. 

It's no big surprise when Peter hears the lock click into place after they walk out. 

The laws of time change when one's left alone with nothing but the hum of florescent lights and an increasingly hostile internal monologue for company. Peter's not sure how many seconds or minutes or centuries pass, but it's enough. More than enough for his resolution to take a hike, for his longstanding but inexplicable faith in Olivia Dunham to lark off so that only his crawling dread remains.

Without a doubt, that's the point of abandoning him here. Knowing he's being manipulated doesn't strip the tactic of its power, unfortunately. 

Peter shifts in his chair, glancing up at the camera in the corner and suppressing a grimace. He rests his chin on his closed fist and wonders how much more time will pass before this is all over. 

If it's ever over.

-x-

Peter doesn't recognize the slim, friendly-looking woman who stations herself against the wall by the door, but the man who follows her into the room, that's another story.

Faith and resolution having departed the field, Peter finds himself with nothing much to fall back on but bravado.

"Colonel Broyles," Peter says, leaning back in his chair and raising an eyebrow. "Nice to meet you."

Broyles has the grace not to look surprised, not to miss a beat as he sits down in the chair opposite Peter's. "Seems I'm going to have to have a chat with my people about the sort of information they're throwing around," he says.

"Nope." Peter shakes his head. "Wasn't them."

Broyles's eyes narrow. "Care to pass on who it was?"

Peter shrugs, drawing out the moment. It's probably the last time in a good long while that he's going to have the upper hand. Might as well enjoy it.

Broyles' chair creaks as he leans forward. "Mr. Bishop," he says, his voice steady and even, "I don't know how things are where you're from, but there's no treaty on _this_ Earth that covers treatment of detainees from another universe. Now, I can be your best friend, or I can be your worst enemy. It's your choice."

Back home, there's no one that doesn't know who Broyles is, despite the man's attempts to dodge interviews and avoid any attention that smacked of limelight. Colonel Broyles, the quiet hero: a serious man, a thinker, a strategist. Quick to give credit for successes; even quicker to take blame when events inevitably went sideways.

Maybe those white hat, good guy qualities exist somewhere inside this doppelgänger version, but right now, this Broyles just looks _pissed_. Peter rolls his eyes and relents. "You run Fringe Division in my world, too. But over there, it's not quite the same cloak-and-dagger shop I'm starting to think yours might be. You could even say you're something of a hero."

Broyles' expression doesn't shift a hair. "Well, Mr. Bishop, over here, I'm just the guy with his fingers stuck in the holes in the dike. And what I need to know from you is whether you're going to help me plug up the leaks, or bring the whole set-up crashing down."

-x-

"Over there," Peter says for the fourth or fifth time, "most people don't even know your world exists. They're fighting a war against nature. Against _physics._ That's all they know."

"Mr. Bishop, I've got whole laboratories full of your side's agents and infiltration technology," he says, shaking his head. "Enough to tell me that what you're saying" — he stabs a finger across the table at Peter — "is patently untrue."

Peter holds up his hands, palms out. "Look, I'm not saying there aren't people fighting you." He forces himself to unclench his teeth and blows out a slow, deep breath to drive away the tension in his neck, to keep his frustration from showing in his voice. "But it's a handful," he continues at last. "Just a few."

Broyles settles back in his chair, chin resting against his folded hands, and Peter resists the urge to wiggle in his chair while he waits. He's already familiar with the posture, as well as the other man's adroitness at knowing when to ask questions and when to let silence do the interrogating for him. They've been going round and round the same set of questions and answers, the same assurances and denials that Peter's pretty sure are getting him nowhere.

The whole process is damn uncomfortable.

Broyles leans forward, lays a hand on the table, and drums his fingers gently. "All right. This handful you're talking about. Your father?"

Peter lifts an eyebrow. Well, that was new. He nods slowly. "Secretary Bishop."

"You?"

"Not even close."

Broyles's fingers still against the tabletop. "You know an awful lot for someone who claims not to be involved."

"I don't like questions that don't have answers," Peter says with a shrug. "And I've got a bad habit of poking my nose in where it doesn't belong."

The corners of Broyles's mouth tighten and lift a fraction in what on any other man Peter would swear was the start of a smirk. "I'm starting to get that," Broyles says.

-x-

Peter's led from the room by the quiet woman who'd spent the whole of his interrogation trying to make herself invisible in the corner. She leads him down hallways, around corners, and up a flight of stairs to a room Peter's sure is no less secure than the one they'd just left. This room at least has a bed, though on further thought that's not much consolation.

He'll probably be here for quite some time.

The young agent excuses herself — an unnecessary politeness in Peter's opinion, all things considered — and walks out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her. Peter lowers himself to sit the bed and scoots back on the mattress until his shoulders and head touch the wall. He lets his eyes drift shut rather than contemplate the sparse furniture and the bare concrete walls of the cell around him. 

Instead, he considers whether he'd have been better off taking his chances back home with his father after all. He'd still be stuck in a cell, no doubt, but at least they wouldn't be able to vanish him from the face of the Earth with only a small handful of people the wiser.

Might not have stopped his father from trying, though.

At the click of the door's latch, Peter's eyes snap back open. Broyles's quiet shadow has returned, this time bearing a tray of food. She sets it down on the little table against the wall and perches herself on the chair opposite.

"No truth serum or anything, I swear," she says, waving him over, "just the finest the agency cafeteria has to offer."

Peter's stomach grumbles in response to the smells drifting in his direction, and he shrugs. "How fine is that exactly?" he asks as he pulls out the second chair.

The young woman purses her lips and tips her head to the side. "Somewhere between day at the ballpark and your average elementary school kitchen."

Peter laughs, a short, surprised sound. "I'm assuming that's just as bad over here as it would be back home."

She nods. "Sad to say, some things must be true everywhere."

Peter takes a few bites of the meat and gravy in front of him and finds he's too hungry to care much about the taste. 

"So," she says, leaning forward to rest her elbows on the table and her chin atop her folded hands, "do you recognize me? From the other side?"

Peter shakes his head. "Not even a little bit."

She makes a face, clearly a little disappointed. "Maybe I'm just that forgettable."

"Hardly." He sets the plastic fork down and picks up the cardboard container of milk from the tray. He tugs on the spout and scowls when it fails to open properly. He prods at the thing with a fingernail and manages to make an opening. "You weren't kidding about the school cafeteria thing."

"I really wasn't." 

"So do I get to know your name, Agent Never-Seen-You-Before? Or is the mystery part of the persona?"

She grins. "I'm Astrid," she says, sticking a hand across the table to shake his. "I help Agent Dunham out on occasion, but mostly I'm Agent Broyles' right-hand man."

"Ah. The power behind the throne."

"Maybe," she says, her grin becoming a little bit crooked. "If you need anything, let me know. I'll see what I can do."

Peter points his fork at her. "Coffee. Olivia tells me you have coffee everywhere. Back home you have to sell a few children and your ancestral home just to get a cup."

"I think I can handle that."

"Thank God. And Agent Astrid."

She rolls her eyes and points at his food. "Now keep eating, or Agent Astrid will get in trouble."

"Yes ma'am."

The quiet as she sits and he eats is almost companionable; she taps the table gently as she waits, a catchy rhythm that could have come from something he'd heard on the radio back home. Peter's reminded of the song Walter had hummed behind him in the basement hallway, hours and a lifetime or two ago.

"How did Olivia even find you over there, anyway?" Astrid asks, finally breaking the silence again.

It's almost perfect, the congenial act, the friend in a dark place, but there's a tiny shift in the tension around her eyes that gives her away. Anything Peter says here is going straight into his permanent record.

They're soldiers protecting their home, all of them, even the kind and friendly Agent Astrid. And none of them even know from what.

-x-

Peter lives what he assumes are several days of the same routine; at least, there are meals spaced out at regular intervals, and there are times when the lights are on and times when they're off. Peter sees Broyles, and he sees Astrid, and he sees a handful of other men and women over and over again. 

He never sees Olivia or Elizabeth or Walter. 

Under the bright lights of the interrogation room, Broyles and his agents ask Peter the same questions enough times and in enough different ways that he knows he'd have no hope of keeping his answers consistent if it weren't for one pesky little detail they may never come to believe. He's telling them the truth. 

Back in his cell with the lights off, Peter forces himself to sleep, and he tries not to dream.

-x-

Olivia walks into the room just as Peter's finishing breakfast.

"Long time no see," he says as she sits in the opposite chair.

"Yeah," she says. Her gaze flicks around the room, taking in the spare furniture, the bare walls, and the camera in the corner. She stares up at the camera for several long seconds before she finally turns back to face him. "I'm sorry about all this, Peter." 

He takes a bite of toast and doesn't bother to answer.

"Right." She clears her throat. "If it makes you feel any better, I've been getting the third degree, too."

Peter chews slowly, finishing the toast off with a swig of coffee. "But I bet you get to go home at night," he says when he's done.

She looks down at her hands and flicks the nail of her forefinger against the pad of her thumb. "With a guard on the door my first few nights."

"Doesn't really make me feel any better, no." He nudges the corner of the tray in front of him, straightening it on the table. "I'm sorry."

She waves a hand, dismissing his words.

"Hey, I don’t have anyplace else to be," he offers. Not anymore, at least. "And the food's not too bad."

She nods. "We're working on that."

"The food?" he asks.

"No, the other part."

Peter's eyes narrow. "Who's we, exactly?"

Olivia shakes her head.

He leans forward, looking up at the camera and then back at her face. "How are you even here telling me this?"

She holds his gaze as if trying to make some point, but whatever connection Peter once thought he'd had with her seems to be inoperable right now, because he hasn’t got a clue what she's thinking. Eventually she leans back in her chair, blowing out a long breath. "Who knows," she says with a shrug. "All evidence to the contrary, Agent Broyles still trusts me." She cocks her head to the side and folds her arms across her chest. "For what it's worth, I think he wants to trust you, too."

-x-

The next time Astrid walks him to the interrogation room, it's Agent Broyles who sits waiting on the other side of the table. Peter doesn't waste time, doesn't wait for Broyles to speak, doesn't even wait for the door to close behind Astrid on the way out. 

He drops into his chair and looks Broyles dead in the eye. "There has to be another way. Some solution to all this besides beating at the edges of both our worlds until the laws of physics cry uncle and _everyone_ ends up dead." Peter lays his hands flat on the table, fingers spread. "I never knew Colonel Broyles personally on the other side. And I sure as hell don't know _you_. But I know you've been sitting here listening to me all this time when you've probably got a thousand better ways to get intel from a guy who doesn't actually exist."

Broyles rests his elbows on the table and steeples his hands in front of his face. "What's your point, Mr. Bishop?"

"There has to be another way." Peter points a finger at the other man. "Maybe you're the guy to find it."

Broyles weaves the fingers of his two hands together. "Maybe _you_ are."

"I don't know," says Peter, leaning back in his chair and staring up at the ceiling. "But somebody damn well better."

-x-

Broyles has never shown up in Peter's holding cell before. When he does, it's with Olivia and — surprisingly — Elizabeth in tow. Olivia comes to stand near the bed where Peter's sitting, while Broyles stops behind one of the chairs at the table. Elizabeth leans against the wall beside the door.

Peter tosses aside the book he'd been perusing, one of several Astrid had brought him a few days before. Nothing too modern, of course; nothing that might give anything away. "You know, on the other side, _Romeo and Juliet_ is a comedy," he says. "A really good comedy. Your Shakespeare was kind of a depressing guy."

Broyles raises an eyebrow. "You're not helping your case any, Mr. Bishop," he says.

"When am I ever?"

Broyles grunts and shakes his head. "We're having a difference of opinion on exactly what to do with you." 

"As in, am I ever getting out of this joint?"

"Maybe." Broyles's closed fist taps against the back of the chair. "What would _you_ do?"

Peter shrugs. "Never been a position to make that kind of call," he says. "So I really can't say."

Broyles looks at Olivia and back to Peter. "Yes. You have. You _all_ have," he says, glancing over his shoulder at Elizabeth. Then he sighs. "Believe it or not, Mr. Bishop, I don't believe you're here for some nefarious purpose. And I appreciate what you did for my people."

"But that doesn't mean you can let me go running around unsupervised. After all, I don't even know _Romeo and Juliet_ is supposed to be a tragedy."

Broyles nods. "You can understand that."

Peter runs his hand through his hair. "But I don't have to like it."

"None of this is the point," Elizabeth says, pushing off of the wall and closing the distance between her and Broyles with slow, small steps.

"And what is?" Broyles asks, turning to face her.

"What does it matter if we win whatever war it is we're fighting if we forget what it means to be human while we do it?" 

"Sometimes there is no other way," Broyles says. 

Elizabeth shakes her head. "We've seen entirely too much for any of us to believe that."

"We're not talking about the laws of physics here."

“He’s my _son_ ,” she says, quiet but firm, now standing mere inches from Broyles’s face. 

“No, Mrs. Bishop. He’s not.”

“Yes he _is_.” She cocks her head to the side, considering him. “What if it were _your_ son, Phillip?”

"I'm not Secretary Bishop."

She shrugs. "No, you're the head of Fringe Division in two universes. How is that any different?"

Broyles's gaze flicks from Elizabeth to Olivia and then on to Peter. His eyes rest there for a long moment, his expression still and unchanging. "I'll take it under consideration," he says, looking back to Elizabeth at last.

Elizabeth opens her mouth to speak again, but Olivia steps forward, laying a hand on the older woman's arm, and she remains silent. The two women exchange a look that lasts a long time, and then Elizabeth nods. "Fine. That's all I ask."

Broyles turns and strides out without another word to any of them. Elizabeth sighs, looks over at Peter, and then follows Broyles out the door. Olivia leans against the table, her palms flat on the dark laminate surface.

Peter leans back against the wall, lacing his fingers behind his head. "So," he says with a mock-smile, "I'm having fun. How about you?"

The corner of Olivia's mouth quirks up and she shakes her head. "He's a good man," she says. "It's a tough job."

Peter shrugs. "Can't really blame him."

"I should really …" Olivia jerks a thumb over her shoulder, indicating the door. He nods, and she pushes off the table and walks out of the room.

Peter picks up _Romeo and Juliet_ from the bed beside him, flips through the pages, and tosses it down again. Maybe he should ask Astrid to bring him a copy of _Alice in Wonderland_ instead.

-x-

Agent Broyles stalks back in about half an hour later. Olivia slips in after him, pulling the door closed behind her. Peter pushes up from the bed and crosses the room to stand in front of them.

Broyles looms before him, hands on his hips. "If you put one toe out of line, one little finger," he says, shaking his head slowly back and forth, "I'm going to pack you away faster than you can say Bob's not your uncle over on this side."

A good solid majority of Peter's instincts are urging him to step forward, to crowd his way into the other man's space. The rest of him would really rather step back — possibly all the way back to where he came from. Fight and flight, bravado or fear. Peter looks over Broyles's shoulder at Olivia, wonders if maybe there might still be a room for faith after all, and splits the difference, standing his ground. "Yeah," he says, sticking his hands in his pockets, "I get that."

Broyles's eyes narrow and his chin lifts slightly, but he doesn't speak to Peter again. Instead, he turns to Olivia. “He’s _your_ responsibility, Agent Dunham.”

"He always was," she responds without a hint of hesitation.

Broyles purses his lips and shakes his head, like he's used to Olivia and her crusades, then he walks out of the room and down the hall, leaving them behind. 

Through the now-open doorway, Peter can see Walter, leaning forward at the waist, eager and curious. Elizabeth's right there beside him, the fabric of his sleeve clasped in her fist, as though she can keep him from tipping all the way over the edge by the sheer force of her will and the tiny grip of her hand.

Olivia nudges Peter with her arm, and he turns to look into her eyes. Those serious, unwavering eyes that ask so many questions but judge him for none of his answers. 

Olivia's come so far. Peter, for all his wandering, has stayed in one place all these years. Until he met her again.

"You ready?" she asks, her voice soft so only he can hear.

He looks from her to his not-quite parents and back once more. "Okay," he says at last. "I'm ready."

"Let's go home." 

.

 _But the ghosts that we knew  
_ _Made us black and all blue  
_ _But we'll live a long life  
_ _And the ghosts that we knew  
_ _Will flicker from view  
_ _And we'll live a long life_  
  
Ghosts That We Knew, Mumford and Sons


End file.
